What We Know About Climate Change, Second Edition by Kerry Emanuel (MIT Press)

Spring 2013 EAPS Author Night

Friday, May 3, 2013Room E25-111 at 4:00 p.m.

Featured author Cecil & Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science at M.I.T. Kerry Emanuel, presents his book "What We Know About Climate Change"

The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity has significantly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—most dramatically since the 1970s. In February 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global warming is "unequivocal" and that human-produced carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are chiefly to blame, to a certainty of more than 90 percent. Yet global warming skeptics and ill-informed elected officials continue to dismiss this broad scientific consensus. In What We Know About Climate Change, Emanuel outlines the basic science of global warming and how the current consensus has emerged. Although it is impossible to predict exactly when the most dramatic effects of global warming will be felt, he argues, we can be confident that we face real dangers. Emanuel, whose work was widely cited in media coverage of Hurricane Katrina, warns that global warming will contribute to an increase in the intensity and power of hurricanes and flooding and more rapidly advancing deserts.

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Image courtesy bbc.co.uk

Kerry Emanuel is a prominent meteorologist and climate scientist who specializes in moist convection in the atmosphere, and on tropical cyclones. His research interests focus on tropical meteorology and climate, with a specialty in hurricane physics. His interests also include cumulus convection, the role of clouds, water vapor, and upper-ocean mixing in regulation of climate, and advanced methods of sampling the atmosphere in aid of numerical weather prediction.

Emanuel, who has a Ph.D. from MIT (1978), has been a member of the EAPS faculty since 1981 during which time he has served as the Director of the Center for Meteorology and Physical Oceanography and, more recently, the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate. He is co-founder of the MIT Lorenz Center, a new climate think tank which fosters creative approaches to learning how climate works.

He was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Influential People who Shape Our World” in 2006. In 2007, he was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.